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One of Canada’s prettiest places to sink a putt may be sunk for good, thanks to the ugly ravages of Alberta flood waters in late June.

The Kananaskis Golf and Country Club was forced to close for the 2013 season after normally picturesque Evan Thomas Creek carved a devastating path through the popular 36-hole property, flooding fairways and erasing greens from the map.

Now, left with a massive repair bill just to return the course to playing condition, the province has confirmed the future of the twin 18-hole courses is up in the air — with no firm decision on whether to restore the golf facility, or just shut it down forever.

“We’re currently doing an assessment of the damage and what it would take to rebuild the golf course,” says Mary Lou Reeleder, communications director at Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation.

With homes destroyed and infrastructure a wreck across a wide swath of southern Alberta, one has to question where a soggy golf course sits in the province’s disaster-recovery budget — especially when that still-uncertain tally could hit billions of dollars.

Despite the angst of tour operators and golfers alike — a petition online already has nearly 300 signatures asking the province to make the course a priority — the government isn’t sure it’s worth restoring Kananaskis to golf-green glory.

Reeleder says the province has experts out on the ruined fairways with calculators, adding up the cost of a rebuild — and that could be very substantial, with golf course landscapers in the U.S. charging as much as US$250,000 per hole to build a modern course from scratch.

“It sustained really significant damage,” says Reeleder.

Images of the Mt. Kidd and Mt. Lorette courses just after the June devastation show the normally placid creek stripped the land, leaving mud, rock and debris in place of the lush fairways where tourists once flocked.

Reeleder says there’s no hope of opening this year, and nothing but questions when it comes to 2014 and beyond.

“It’s definitely closed for this season and until the assessment is done it’s too early to speculate on what the future might hold.”

The possibility that K-Country has heard its last “fore” has left golfers and those who depend on their dollars forlorn, and one outfit, Golf Canada West, has gone so far as to start a petition at change.org seeking provincial mercy.

“We need the Minister of Tourism, Parks and Recreation to commit today, to the re-opening of one of Alberta’s most popular and successful recreational resources,” reads the petition launched by Gordon Schultz, owner of the golf tour outfitter.

So far, it has 285 signees, including foreign tourists pleading with the province to rebuild the course.

“What a wonderful golf experience. Please bring it back to life. I have been playing golf for over 30 years, and have played on many courses in many places. Kananaskis is the best golf experience that I have ever had, and look forward to playing it again,” writes Dusty Wade, of Sapulpa, Oklahoma.

Such sentiments are typical of golfers who loved the Kananaskis links, both designed by famed English course architect Robert Trent Jones Sr., and consistently ranked among the top 100 courses in Canada.

But even if golfers manage to convince the province that public golf deserves a share of flood-relief funding, there are others in Alberta who are celebrating the course’s demise — and are asking the province to leave it that way.

“What we would say is the priority for that area should be threatened native species — this flood is telling us that,” says Carolyn Campbell, a conservation specialist at the Alberta Wilderness Association.

Campbell says the original course design ruined the natural creek flow for westslope cutthroat trout, a threatened species, and Kananaskis should first and foremost be a haven for wildlife, rather than golfers.

“It doesn’t make sense to rebuild the course there. It’s better to put a pretty engineered landscape like a golf course outside of a protected provincial park.”

Fate of once pristine Kananaskis Golf and Country Club up in the air after flood devastates famed Alberta course

One of Canada’s prettiest places to sink a putt may be sunk for good, thanks to the ugly ravages of Alberta flood waters in late June.

The Kananaskis Golf and Country Club was forced to close for the 2013 season after normally picturesque Evan Thomas Creek carved a devastating path through the popular 36-hole property, flooding fairways and erasing greens from the map.

Now, left with a massive repair bill just to return the course to playing condition, the province has confirmed the future of the twin 18-hole courses is up in the air — with no firm decision on whether to restore the golf facility, or just shut it down forever.